First
answer always right?
Wrong!
Students taught how to take tests: Mid-terms provide a dose of reality

From
an article by Louise Brown, Education Reporter, from the Nov. 7.
2005 Toronto Star

First-year
university student David Arias thought he knew all the tricks of
multiple-choice tests: “When in doubt,
choose answer ‘c’' — it's usually right.” Wrong. Contrary to campus
myth,
studies show that professors don’t put the right answer in one position
more
often than another, said Arias’s teacher, Dawn Lovas, in a course on
study
skills that is compulsory for Arias and all first-year students at RyersonUniversity.

“Don't
ever
change your answer. Your first instinct is always right.” Wrong again,
Lovas
said. Research shows
students switch from wrong to right answers slightly more often than
the other
way around, she warned about 20 students during a recent Friday morning
session
on multiple-choice tests. “If one of the choices is ‘All of the above,’
take
it. It's always right.” Not always, Lovas warned. “When in doubt,
choose the
longest answer.” Wrong again.

As
Ontario's college and university
students wrap
up mid-terms and start bracing for December exams, institutions are
beefing up
the help they offer students making the transition from high school to
higher
learning. To Arias, a
20-year-old sociology major from Scarborough, “this is all helpful. You
always hear these sayings, but
who ever knows if they're true?” Ryerson is one of the first to require
all
first-year students to take a half-course on study skills. Queen's
University,
like most campuses in November, has added extra shifts to its writing
clinic
and still has waiting lists six days a week.

Personal
counsellors say this is one of their busiest times of year. “We see
many
students stressed out from the mid-term slump. They're getting back
marks 15 to
20% lower than in high school, so we tell them to calm down and not
push the
panic button and call their parents to pick them up and take them back
home,”
said Mike Condra, director of health counselling at the Kingston university.“Giving up this early in the year is a bit
like quitting a new job after eight minutes because no one smiled at
you,”
Condra said. “There's lots of time to improve — if you learn from your
mid-terms.”

At
Ryerson,
Lovas gives tips on how to succeed at the multiple-choice tests, which
are
common among professors coping with large classes. “But overall we're
trying to
be proactive with first-year students by having them take a half-course
on
learning when they first arrive,” said Lovas, whose tutorial students
also
attend a lecture on learning each week. “It's not often that students
will ask
for help unless something happens,” she said, “so we feel it's better
just to
have the course compulsory for everyone first term.”

Lovas
has young
scholars keep a study journal to track their own habits and see where
they
might improve. “That's why I study at 2 a.m.!” said one female student.
“There's no
one left to talk to because all my friends have gone to bed and all the
good TV
shows are over.” Lovas talks about human memory and explains that
people
remember material better if they review it within 24 hours of first
learning
it. She suggests tricks for memorizing large lists of facts and
recommends
students have a “note buddy” with whom to swap lecture notes after
class.

And
she serves
up an array of tips on multiple-choice tests. “If you're making an
educated
guess, avoid answers that contain absolute terms like “never’ or
‘always’ —
they're often incorrect, especially in arts courses,” Lovas said.
“Instead,
look for answers that contain qualifying words like ‘some, many, few,
more,
usually’ because they're more likely to be correct.”

That’s
a tip
that student Sike Olowolafe wishes she had learned several weeks ago —
before
her first multiple-choice mid-term. “We need all the help we can get
here,
because university is so different from high school,” said Olowolafe, a
sociology major. “I never realized how much they literally spoon-fed us
in high
school until I got to university. In high school, teachers would tell
us what
sections to study for the exam and give us so much more help, and we
used to
complain even then.”

One
student
asked Lovas whether it was true that “apple juice makes you smarter for
exams?” She pondered the
thought. “Maybe the sugar would give you a short-term energy kick,” she
said.
“But I don't think it does anything else.” Nonetheless, David Arias
reached
into his knapsack and pulled out a small box of apple juice.